It is all about the words!

Monthly Archives: February 2018

When I first heard this advice, I thought it was odd. I don’t remember where I first heard it, but I remember thinking that as far as writing tips went, it was absurd.

What about writing from your imagination or your feelings? How do genres like science fiction and fantasy fit into the idea that you should only write what you know?

It all seemed rather limiting. Was I supposed to write about American suburbia? That’s what I knew, and it was the last thing I wanted to write about.

One of the reasons memoir doesn’t appeal to me as a writer is because I don’t want to write what I know. I don’t want to relive my life. I want to use writing to live outside of my life, to explore what I don’t know.

I decided to disregard the advice and write whatever I wanted.

What Does It Mean to Write What You Know?

Over the years, I began to understand that write what you know isn’t one of those writing tips that is meant to be taken literally. It’s not an instruction; it’s a guideline.

J.K. Rowling invented a world of magic, a world that many of us might dream about but none could know in the literal sense. Yet she based that world on our world and on the many fantastical, fictional worlds that already exist in literature. Even if we’re not consciously aware of it, we are constantly influenced by what we’ve read, seen, and experienced. My guess is that in one way or another, the seeds of Harry Potter’s world came from Middle Earth, Narnia, and a galaxy far, far away.

The most fantastical worlds in storytelling are beloved because they are full of truths. They tell us who we are as individuals and as a society. I would guess that Ms. Rowling knows a thing or two about friendship and loyalty because there is truth in the relationships that exist between Harry and his closest friends, Ron and Hermione. These relationships have ups and downs but are constant.

While flipping back and forth between two channels late at night, Suzanne Collins saw kids competing on reality TV and footage of the war in Iraq. The images blurred in her tired mind, and the Hunger Games were born. She didn’t know a world where children were thrust into an arena to fight to the death. But she could take what she knew (or could learn), add a heap of her own imagination, and render a believable story world.

To write what you know does not mean you only write about experiences you’ve had, people you’ve met, or places you’ve been. It means you use what you know about life, nature, and humanity as the foundation for your stories.

Write What You Want

I believe the best writing is a balanced mixture of what the writer knows and what the writer seeks. Maybe the setting is the writer’s home town and the characters are based on her friends and family, but the plot is completely outside her realm of experience. Maybe the plot is taken from history, which the writer has researched (and therefore knows), but the world in which it is set is drawn from her imagination. Creativity and art are all about combining existing elements in innovative ways.

It is true: you should write what you know, but you should also leave room in writing for the unknown, room to explore and discover new truths, ideas, and possibilities:

Write what you feel. Use your personal, emotional experiences and share them with the reader through characters you’ve invented. Emotional truths make a piece of fiction honest and compelling.

Write what you imagine. Let yourself explore a world of possibilities: fantastical beasts, mythical creatures, aliens, and strange, magical worlds.

Write what you experience. Every experience you’ve had can be translated to fiction. Remember your first day of school? Tweak that experience and give it to one of your characters, even if the character is an elf or an alien.

Write what interests you. You can write what you know after you’ve learned it. Conduct research about things that interest you and then use those things in your stories. Pull facts and ideas from history, current events, and textbooks.

Write what matters to you. It goes without saying that your work must matter to you. Write about what moves you, stirs your passion, fills you with joy or rage. If you’re invested in your project, it will come through in your writing and it will speak to higher truths.

What do you write?

How do you feel about writing tips like write what you know? Do you try to write what you know? How far outside of what you know do you take your writing? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment, and keep writing.

There has to be. Why else are you reading a post about writing a book?

Getting that book out, of course, is the extremely difficult part. The words don’t come out as we imagine. The time to write shrinks as life gets busier.

And so many questions vex us — so many lies that we tell ourselves to avoid the challenge ahead.

But you have to write your book. It’s one of the greatest driving forces in your life.

4 Lies That Stop You From Writing Your Book

Before you can get started, you have to confront and reject the four lies that have probably been keeping you from writing the book of your dreams. Tackle these lies head-on, and replace them with the truth:

1. It has to be long

How long should a novel be? Is there an exact number of words or pages for it to be a success?

This question can certainly stop us in our tracks. The idea of writing a novel always seems enormous, like climbing the world’s tallest mountain.

Yet there is no rule about how long the book has to be. That’s up to you.

Sure, there are genre-specific suggestions about word counts. The good news is that most of them are lower than you might think! Especially if you are a new author, agents and editors want to see how much story you can tell with fewer words, saving on publishing costs.

There is no absolute book length that works. Of Mice and Men is 30,000 words long, while A Game of Thrones is 300,000.

2. I have to have the story figured out

This lie is a crippling one. It demands perfection even before we’ve started.

Yet it is impossible to know exactly how our stories are going to go before we’ve written them. Every attempt at a story runs into surprises and roadblocks. Our plans, no matter how exhaustive, always fail to materialize just how we thought they would.

One popular way of writing a book is to blog it, as Andy Weir did with The Martian. One chapter at a time, he posted to his website and slowly gathered a following. While he is certainly a rare and privileged case, it shows how giving and serving with our writing can solve our readership problem.

Commit to Your Book

There’s a book inside of you. That’s why you’re on this website, looking for help with your writing.

So commit.

Whether it’s 100 words a day, 500, or 1000, commit to working on your book every day.

Occasionally, we grammar enthusiasts need to take a step back and lighten up a little bit. While there are some grammar rules that are hard and fast (I’m looking at you, comma splice), sometimes there is wiggle room (like the controversial claim that you can split infinitives). Today, we’re tackling another wiggly rule: is ending a sentence with a preposition okay?

Well, guess what? I’m here to liberate your pens and tell you that it’s okay for your protagonist to ask her cheating boyfriend who he was just with.

What Is a Preposition?

First, a quick review: what is a preposition? These cats explain it pretty well.

To sum up:

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A preposition describes the location of a noun or pronoun in space or time.

The prepositions above show the cats’ locations in space. Let’s add to the fun with these prepositions that show location in time:

Is Ending a Sentence With a Preposition Bad?

The bottom line: a few centuries ago, when our grammar was a murky mess, some outspoken grammarians decided to apply Latin rules to English, regardless of whether that was a sensible choice.

In this case, dramatist John Dryden was the first to take up the pen against ending sentences with prepositions, way back in 1672. He claimed that since you can’t end a sentence with a preposition in Latin, you shouldn’t do it in English, either.

The Problem With Following the Rule

English isn’t Latin, though, and we structure our sentences very differently. It’s easy to construct perfectly logical and grammatically sound sentences whose only “fault” is that they end with prepositions.

Plus, when you try to “fix” these sentences, you can end up with some pretty crazy twists, like this quote often misattributed to Winston Churchill:

“This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put!”

And as we recognize how arbitrary and baseless this rule was to begin with, we’ve moved away from strictly adhering to it. So if you’ve ever written yourself into a corner fretting over the preposition rule, breathe deep.

It’s okay to end a sentence with a preposition.

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Believe it or not, it IS okay to end a sentence with a preposition.Tweet this

That being said, there are a few caveats.

When It’s NOT Okay to End a Sentence With a Preposition

If the meaning of the sentence is still clear without the ending preposition, then remove it.

In my hometown in the hills of western PA, it’s not uncommon to overhear someone on the phone asking, “Hey, where are you at?” “Where are you” doesn’t need any clarification, so cut that “at.”

Then again, it’s also not uncommon to overhear someone refer to a group of people as “yinz guys,” so I’d hardly claim my hometown as a beacon of good grammar and usage.

However, if the preposition is key to the sentence’s meaning, and moving it would cause unnecessary written acrobatics, it’s fine to end your sentence with the preposition. For example:

Carla wanted to run, but her feet refused. What was she waiting for?

Rewriting that last phrase would completely convolute the prose. No one asks, “For what was she waiting?” Come on now.

Two weeks ago, I urged you to come on a publication journey with me, one where I walk you through the process of planning, writing, and submitting a short story. This is the second post in the four-part series on how to publish a short story. By the end, you’ll have a story ready to send out to publications!

NOTE: Throughout this series, DO NOT post your work in the comments. I’m going to ask you to submit to a publisher at the end of this series, and posting it here would be considered publishing it. Our Becoming Writer community is a great place to workshop your story before you submit it.

Writing Your Story

By now, you should have a publication in mind and have the answers to a couple basic questions. Maybe you brainstormed or did a full outline. Bonus points if you’ve got a draft! (But don’t worry if you don’t.)

Now pick up the pen and write the thing!

This series is focused on how to submit stories and isn’t meant to be a masterclass in short story writing, but I’ve tried to include as many basics as I can. For further information on writing shorts, check this out.

If you’ve got a draft already, this post will still be useful to you, so don’t skip reading it!

3. First Draft: Write in One Sitting

Smile. This is the fun part.

Short stories are meant to be consumed in a single sitting, so it makes sense to write them in one. This isn’t as daunting as it seems. You’ll find your enthusiasm will drive you to the end and the story will flow much better.

Sit down and write. Write quickly. Write badly. Just write.

This is not the time to worry about your word count. Wait, what? I know. I told you to pick out a publication and they’ve given you a word count to stick to. Ignore that for the moment.

Right now, your job is to tell your story. The story will let you know when it’s finished. Overwriting is fine, and actually encouraged, at this stage. On the opposite end, if you’re lacking in words, that’s okay, too. You can always fill in more description later.

For now, just let it flow.

But do remember the four questions I gave you the last time and keep them in mind as a roadmap for going forward. Don’t worry if you get a little lost or off-track. Sometimes stories insist on a life of their own. Don’t panic. That’s normal.

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Short stories are meant to be read in one sitting, so write your first draft in one sitting, too.

4. Break Time

When you’ve written the last word and are riding that rush of excitement, I need you to do something vitally important: TAKE A BREAK! This is so important, I’ve included it as one of the steps instead of simply mentioning it in passing.

Put the story away and out of your mind. I recommend a three-day hiatus at this stage. That’s just enough for you to forget what you wrote and why you wrote it that way, but not enough time to lose interest in the story.

Don’t look at it. Don’t edit it. Don’t even think about it.

Read a book, get some sleep, or work on another story. Fight the urge to edit right away!

5. Second Draft: Get Critical

You’ve had a break and hopefully you’ve forgotten why you loved this specific turn of phrase or that overlong description. Now you’re going to get brutal. You’re going to cut, add, and rearrange with all the mercy of a general on a battlefield.

First things first: Make sure your story is a story! This might sound obvious, but sometimes it’s not.

When I first started writing shorts, it was all nonsense. Halfway decent prose, but utter nonsense. There was no point. There was no character development. There was no climax. It took a long time for me to realize I was getting rejected because I hadn’t written a story.

A short is different from a novel. You don’t have time to ramble. But a short story is still a story and needs to read like one. It must contain all the elements I mentioned mine lacked. And it must have a beginning, middle, and end.

Elements of a Short Story: What Should Be

Start with action: No overly complicated scene setting or a ton of character inner musings needed. Get the story moving.

Show, don’t tell: Telling seems like a good way to get to the point, right? Nope. A short story is still a story, not a sequence of events spat out in synopsis form by a robot. This happens, then this happens, and finally this happens, is an outline, not a narrative.

Good pacing: Good shorts don’t spend too much time on description and rush through the action. They flow well from one scene to the next and none of those scenes are unnecessary.

Climax and efficient build up to it: Every single word in a short story needs to drive the reader to the climax. Move toward that climax efficiently. If there’s something that doesn’t serve this purpose, chop it. And make sure your climax is in there!

Satisfying resolution: Your ending must wrap up your story. It needs to be clear, there can be a twist or surprise (but make sure that surprise isn’t coming out of nowhere), and there needs to be a change from the way things were in the beginning.

Common Short Story Mistakes: What Shouldn’t Be

Overcomplicated plot: Again, keep it simple. Shorts revolve around one central theme, action, upheaval, or event. If you’ve got a bunch of B plots, your story probably isn’t suited for the structure of a short.

Too much backstory and world-building: Only tell us what we need to know, when we need to know it. You can know every little detail about your character’s third-grade experience or the ecosystem of your fictional planet, but is it necessary for your reader to know? This is a general rule when writing, but especially so for shorts. You don’t have the space to tell us everything. Stick to the point.

Bad dialogue: This is one of the things I see the most with short stories. One way to fix this is to read your dialogue aloud, preferably with a partner. If it sounds funny coming out of your mouth, it’s not right. Remember, people rarely use another person’s name when talking to them and contractions are your friend.

Head hopping: Stay in one point of view. There’s not enough time or space in a short to skip around.

Abrupt ending: Make sure you haven’t just cut off your story to stay in the word count. (The climax is not the ending!) Take us all the way through.

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Want to publish a short story? Edit ruthlessly.

Write, Write, Write!

For the next two weeks, concentrate on getting through the first and second drafts using the tips above. This might get frustrating at points. You may want to give up. Don’t. You’ll get through it.

Many writers I know are overwhelmed and struggle to focus on writing anything. Do I research? Get a draft down? Should I be blogging? Do I need to get a business license? What about social media? What’s for dinner? (Sorry, my kids added that one).

A few years ago, I learned a technique that helped me get a handle on my to do list, and freed me to prioritize my writing. Along with sneaking time to write, learning to write in batches has changed the way I work.

Batching is a technique I first began to use in my day job to make sure I don’t get stuck in the lesson-planning-rabbit-hole-of-ideas. I could plan lessons all day long, but my students need me to teach and grade, my colleagues need me to answer emails or attend meetings, and occasionally I need to use the restroom or eat lunch.

I began batching several years ago, identifying the most critical tasks and then setting aside specific time for each.

If the idea of planning gives you hives, don’t worry! We’ll start small and then you can scale, building focus on writing as you go.

Know your what and why

As a writer, know what you want most. If you are working on your first book, the most important thing you can do is finish a first draft. If you are building a blogging tribe, your priority needs to be words on the page (and blog) on a regular schedule.

Choose the top one or two things you want from your writing time this month and take a few minutes to understand why this is the priority. Don’t skip this step, because it will be the motivation you need to tell the multitasking elves in your brain to pipe down while you work.

Make it actionable

Make sure your priority task is something that is actionable and in your control. Here’s an example of the difference: instead of “get an agent,” your task might be “query five agents this week.” I can’t forcibly “get an agent” without being arrested, but I can research and query five agents who would be a great fit for me and my book.

If you are finishing a book, set a word count goal. Building a blog? Set a number of posts per week or month goal. If you are working on marketing, set the goal of creating an email sequence to reach your email list.

Maybe you’re thinking: But I need to do all those things! Everything I read tells me to blog and market and email and write and daydream and get an agent.

Please hear me say this in my most compassionate, firm teacher voice: No. You don’t have to do all those things today.

In fact, trying to do them all at once is killing your writing and motivation. Over time you may complete each of those tasks, but unless you are a full-time writer with an assistant, it isn’t all getting done this week.

Release yourself from unrealistic expectations and choose the top two or three priorities.

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Don’t try to accomplish all your writing goals right now. Choose your top priority for this month and give yourself an actionable task.

The magic of batching

I often watch students as they write, and sometimes they write a sentence, check Twitter, open their Biology homework, and then go back to their essay or story. Then they wonder why they can’t get any momentum. Adults do the same thing.

I read about batching several years ago, and the simplicity of it appealed to me. When you batch, you work at one type of task for a set amount of time, take a break, and then either continue the same task or switch to a new one for a set amount of time.

For example: Let’s say I’m writing blog posts and sorting/answering emails. I set a timer for twenty minutes and only work on writing a blog post. If I finish the first one and the timer hasn’t gone off, I start a new blog post, and continue working until the timer rings. Then I take a three to five minute break. I reset the timer for twenty minutes and start working through emails.

For twenty minutes, I say no to the call of social media, the research reference I need to look up for that blog post, and anything else that threatens to distract me. I just focus on writing.

Steve Jobs, in reflecting on innovation, once said, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”

His words apply to anything we want to accomplish. Focus is saying “no” to a thousand things crying for our attention. Batching helps you prioritize and focus, knowing that the other things on your list will have a turn in time. Your writing life is worth valuing by giving it the most precious resource you have: time.

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“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.” —Steve Jobs

Get simple

Stop overthinking and making tasks more difficult than they have to be (I’m speaking sternly to myself here).

Make your list of two or three high priority tasks. Begin with the one you identified that was most important. Set the timer. Don’t let yourself wallow or writhe, just work on it for twenty minutes. Take a quick break and do it again.

Over time, I hope you’ll find that it frees your mind to go all in on the task at hand and focus on writing instead of wandering from tab to tab in your browser, letting multitasking steal your time.

Have you tried working in batches? What do you do to prioritize your writing time and focus on writing? Let us know in the comments.

What is a Style Guide and Should I Use One?

A style guide is a manual that establishes rules for language (including grammar and punctuation) and formatting. Within academia, these guides also provide standards for citations, references, and bibliographies. Many disciplines have their very own style guides, such as the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

These manuals promote proper grammar and ensure consistency in areas where grammar is unclear. Style guides answer all those burly writing questions that are absent from the rules of grammar: Did you use a serial comma in the first paragraph, but leave it out in the third? Have you used italics in one post to refer to a book title, but in another post used quotation marks?

Basically, a style guide is an all-purpose writing resource.

If you’re serious about writing, then you should definitely use a style guide. Since a style guide’s primary function is to render a work consistent and mechanically sound, every project will benefit from its application. That includes creative writing, freelance writing, and blogging!

In many cases, a style guide is not only appropriate, it’s mandatory. If you’re writing for submission, it’s a good idea to check a publication’s submission guidelines to see if they require writers to use particular style guide.

By establishing standards, a style guide will help you streamline your work. Once you are accustomed to using a particular set of guidelines, the writing process will flow more smoothly, because you won’t have to stop and deliberate on grammar and style. Your readers will be pleased too, since inconsistency causes confusion.

What about freelance writers, bloggers, fiction writers, and everyone else?

The most popular style guide for general use is The Chicago Manual of Style, and this is also the style guide commonly used for manuscripts (i.e. novels and anthologies). Many other writing guides are based on Chicago or will defer to it for any areas of style that they do not specifically address. It covers formatting, includes rules for good grammar usage, and provides a roadmap that ensures your work is mechanically consistent.

For general use, Chicago is by far one of the best writing resources on the market, and for me, it’s been one of the best investments I’ve made for my own writing career.

Do you use a style guide, and if so, which one? Are there other writing resources that you can’t live without? Share your favorites in the comments.

Creative writing prompts are excellent tools for writers who are feeling uninspired or who simply want to tackle a new writing challenge. Today’s creative writing prompts focus on nature.

For centuries, writers have been composing poems that celebrate nature, stories that explore it, and essays that analyze it.

Nature is a huge source of inspiration for all creative people. You can find it heavily featured in film, television, art, and music.

Creative Writing Prompts

You can use these creative writing prompts in any way you choose. Sketch a scene, write a poem, draft a story, or compose an essay. The purpose of these prompts is to inspire you, so take the images they bring to your mind and run with them. And have fun!

A young girl and her mother walk to the edge of a field, kneel down in the grass, and plant a tree.

The protagonist wakes up in a seemingly endless field of wildflowers in full bloom with no idea how he or she got there.

Write a piece using the following image: a smashed flower on the sidewalk.

A family of five from a large, urban city decides to spend their one-week vacation camping.

An elderly couple traveling through the desert spend an evening stargazing and sharing memories of their lives.

A woman is working in her garden when she discovers an unusual egg.

Write a piece using the following image: a clearing deep in the woods where sunlight filters through the overhead lattice of tree leaves.

Some people are hiking in the woods when they are suddenly surrounded by hundreds of butterflies.

A person who lives in a metropolitan apartment connects with nature through the birds that come to the window.

Write a piece using the following image: an owl soaring through the night sky.

A well-to-do family from the city that has lost all their wealth except an old, run-down farmhouse in the country. They are forced to move into it and learn to live humbly.

Two adolescents, a sister and brother, are visiting their relatives’ farm and witness a sow giving birth.

Again, you can use these creative writing prompts to write anything at — poems, stories, songs, essays, blog posts, or just sit down and start freewriting.

The hero, the mentor, the sidekick. We’re all familiar with archetypal characters in storytelling. We’ve seen them before. We know the roles they play.

Archetypal characters shouldn’t be confused with stock characters or stereotypical characters. Although we’ve seen all these characters before and will surely see them again, stock and stereotypical characters are based on character traits; archetypes are based on the characters’ function or purpose within a story.

Characters’ Function in Story

Archetypal characters fulfill a specific function a story. The herald signals change or the beginning of an adventure. The mentor imparts gifts, skills, or knowledge to the hero. The threshold guardian tests the hero or blocks the path forward.

Stock characters feel familiar because they embody a personality type — behaviors and attitudes that we’ve seen in similar characters before. The tough guy, the girl next door, and the wise old man or woman are all examples of stock characters. They may serve a purpose in the story (somebody has to serve the main characters at a restaurant), but what stands out is their personality, which sometimes feels cliché.

Stereotypical characters reflect social stereotypes, which are widely held and often inaccurate or misleading beliefs about groups. Stereotypes occur when traits, behaviors, and attitudes are assigned to an entire group. They often based on race, religion, gender, or geographical origin, and they are usually negative. Stereotypes make irrational assumptions about individuals based on the group to which they belong.

How can we tell the difference between an archetype, stock character, or stereotype? Let’s use the Knight in Shining Armor and a Damsel in Distress as examples. The damsel functions as a plot device, providing the hero with a goal (to save her), and the knight functions as a hero whose primary goal is to rescue the damsel. But the function these characters perform within a story (to save or be saved) need not be assigned to a damsel or a knight. A child could save a puppy. A witch could save a wizard. Or a lifeguard could save a swimmer.

If we remove the personality traits, we’re left with the function: give the hero someone or something to save, i.e., an archetypal function.

Archetypal Characters from The Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell discovered archetypal characters that exist in stories throughout time and across space. He presented his findings in the Monomyth (or Hero’s Journey), and Christopher Vogler later adapted Campbell’s findings in his book, The Writer’s Journey. Let’s take a look at the eight archetypes of the Hero’s Journey:

Hero: Protagonist who undergoes a meaningful transformation over the course of a story and who often changes the conditions of the story world for the better.

Herald: Signals that an adventure (or change) is imminent.

Mentor: Teacher and guide.

Threshold Guardian: Blocks a threshold that the Hero must pass; tests the Hero.

Shadow: The villain and other characters that stand in the Hero’s way; often they embody the Hero’s negative or undesirable traits.

Shapeshifter: A character or entity whose motives or intentions are unclear.

Trickster: Comic relief; Tricksters are often catalysts for change.

Allies: The Hero’s friends and helpers.

You’ll often see these archetypes in various combinations in storytelling. Some stories may not use a shapeshifter while others might have more than one trickster. A single character can embody multiple archetypes. For example, the character that performs the function of the Herald might also be a Trickster. The Mentor could act as the Threshold Guardian.

Other Archetypal Characters

The Hero’s Journey isn’t the only source of archetypal characters. There are other types of stories and other archetypes in fiction. Here’s a small sampling:

Anti-hero: This is an inverted hero, the protagonist is not likable or engages in despicable or immoral behaviors.

Audience surrogate: A stand-in for the audience, to inject questions and thoughts on behalf of the audience.

The Chosen One: A type of hero who is destined for greatness or tragedy rather than earning it.

The Cynic: This untrusting character often provides skepticism or challenges the status quo.

This is just a small sampling of archetypes you might find in fiction. You can have a lot of fun identifying archetypes, but make sure each one performs a function rather than represents a behavior or personality type. A common archetype I’ve noticed is The Oppressor, a character who uses their power to rob other characters of their rights, freedoms, and justice. The Misfit is a character that doesn’t fit in with mainstream society and either learns to fit in or eventually learns to be true to who they are.

Using Character Archetypes

Character archetypes can come in handy during the story development process. You might write a draft or outline and feel that it’s missing something. Maybe your story needs one of the character archetypes to mark the stages and progress of your protagonist’s journey.

Have you ever intentionally used archetypes in your stories? Are there any character archetypes you’ve noticed in fiction that aren’t mentioned here? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment, and keep writing.

Most writers are primarily concerned with the meaning of the words they choose. Is the language precise and accurate? Do the words provide the best connotation for what the writer is trying to communicate? Does the language show, rather than tell?

But poets take language a step further and push it into the realm of music. Poets care about meaning, precision, and accuracy as well as connotation and imagery. But they also care about how words sound, because musicality is a fundamental feature of poetry.

Poets use various elements of music to compose a poem. But because the written word is read and not heard, some elements of music aren’t available, like pitch and timbre.

Spoken word and performance (or slam) poetry are exceptions, because these works are designed to be heard and can incorporate musical elements that aren’t available to authors who write to be read. But most poets rely on a variety of literary devices and techniques to bring music to their work. Foremost among these are meter, sound, rhyme, repetition, and structure.

Meter (Rhythm)

In poetry, meter is a syllabic pattern, which is determined by stressed and unstressed syllables. We’ll use bold to denote stressed syllables in the first line of “What Kind of Times Are These” by Adrienne Rich:

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grassgrows uphill

Let’s see what happens when we strip away the language, so we can see the raw meter of the line:

da-da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-da DUM DUM da-DUM

As you can see, the meter gives the poem rhythm, an underlying drumbeat. This demonstration shows why it’s important to review the syllables in the lines of your poetry to check the meter.

Sound (Melody)

A song’s melody is determined by the sequence and length of notes played or sung by musicians. In poetry, melody is driven by the vowel and consonant sounds within the words of the poem. Consider this simple tune: la de-da, la de-da, la-la-la.

Now compare it to this: doo-da, doo-da, doo-de-da.

We don’t know the exact notes or melody just from reading these sounds, but there is an implied tune when we read them aloud. We can bring a little rhythm to the sounds as well by placing stress on select syllables:

LA de-da, LA de-da, LA-LA-LA.

DOO-da, DOO-da, DOO-de-DA.

So how do we put it all together? By choosing words that match the melody and meter that we’re aiming for:

LA de-da, LA de-da, LA-LA-LA.
On the dock, six o’clock, stomp on rock

DOO-da, DOO-da, DOO-de-DA.
Stooping, drooping, boorish king

You’ll notice that in addition to rhythm and meter, we introduced some rhymes.

Rhyme

The most common rhymes are perfect end rhymes–words that appear at the end of lines in poetry and that rhyme perfectly. Here’s an example from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax:

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot
Nothing is going to get better, it’s not.

The words lot and not rhyme perfectly and are placed at the end of the first two lines, respectively. The placement of rhyme in a poem, coupled with its meter, can give the lines a sing-song quality. We can use different meters, sounds, and rhyme placements to pull different musical qualities into our poetry. Here’s an excerpt from “Spelling” by Margaret Atwood, which shows internal rhymes:

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rockbreaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite

Try reading these lines aloud to hear the inherent music contained within. Notice that the lines do not use a metrical pattern, but the layered internal rhymes give it rhythm:

away and breaks

hot and rock

bones, open, and flows

The word point appears three times in these five lines, but the repetition of this word is barely noticeable.

It’s worth noting that some poems don’t rhyme at all. Rhyme is important in poetry, but it’s actually a subset of a broader and even more important poetic device that is essential in both poetry and music: repetition. After all, rhyme is just repetition of sounds.

Repetition

Repetition is the technique that really sums up how we make music out of words in poetry. All of the techniques mentioned above ultimately use repetition:

We create a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables — and a pattern is really just repetition.

We choose words and arrange them in such a way that they create a pseudo melody, which is achieved primarily by patterning (or repeating) certain sounds.

And we use rhyme — maybe end rhymes that ring like cymbals or internal rhymes that jingle like a tambourine. Rhymes are, by nature, repetition.

Layering the repetitions of these elements creates greater musical dynamics in a poem.

As you can see, a poem’s musicality really comes from the repetition of various elements within the lines and stanzas. And there are more elements that we can repeat. Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in close proximity: prickly pears. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in close proximity: hat rack.

Some poems even use repetition in their very structure.

Structure

A poem’s music also comes from its structure — the length of lines and stanzas, placement of line and stanza breaks, punctuation, and spacing. All of these elements contribute to the poem’s structural sounds and therefore contribute to its musicality.

In music, a rest is an interval of silence. In poetry, these intervals are indicated by line breaks, stanza breaks, punctuation, and spacing. Rests are similar to the concept of white space in art.

For example, punctuation provides indicators for pausing (or resting) with commas and periods or inflections for questions and exclamations.

Do You Make Music with Poetry?

Plenty of excellent works of poetry aren’t especially musical. But musicality is an important aspect of poetry.

When life gets hectic, it’s impossible to get your creative writing done. Inspiration might be knocking, but the house is so full, you’re not sure you can open the door and let it in. How can you keep writing?

What if all you need is sixty seconds?

We all have responsibilities to fulfill and obligations to meet. We’ve got bills to pay, jobs to do, children to care for, and pets to play with. The lawn has to be mowed, garbage taken out, laundry done, dishes cleaned; the list goes on and on and on.

How Do We Find Time for Creative Writing?

Our writing happens when the muse is happily seducing our imaginations — when new worlds magically appear on the page and when fictional characters seem more real than some of the people we know in our day-to-day lives.

Creative writing is one of those pursuits that, for many people, is a dream. Like music, dance, acting, and art, it seems unattainable. Like athletics, entrepreneurship, and leadership, it seems meant only for the chosen few. Every day a writer is born. And every day, a writer gives up, overwhelmed by all the things in life that require time, energy, and attention.

Every day, another blog is abandoned, another novel shelved, another poem left unfinished. “I just don’t have time anymore,” a writer says, then deletes a file that was going to be the next great American novel, or crumples up a poem that would have inspired the next great world leader and throws it in the trash.

Don’t Give Up

What if J.K. Rowling had given up on her fantastical story? What if George Lucas had given up on his groundbreaking film? What if the Beatles hadn’t taken a chance on that new sound everyone was calling rock and roll? What kind of world would we be living in?

I almost gave up on my creative writing. For several years, I rarely wrote, other than the writing I had to do for work, which was technical or business writing. It was only by sheer luck that the company I worked for closed, forcing me to find some other path, and only by an odd combination of chance, drive, and a willingness to take risks did I return to my writing so that I could sit here years later amazed that now I make (part of) my living doing it.

And I’m willing to take the dream a little further, do a little more. Whether it’s this year, next year, or in five years, the dream is mine, and I’m not giving up on it.

Neither should you.

Keep Writing!

If you don’t have time to write, then make time.

You don’t have to sit down and write ten pages a day. In five minutes, you can jot down a few paragraphs. In fifteen, you can run off a page. Some days, you’ll get lucky and be able to steal an hour or two. Other days, you’ll have to crunch just to get a couple of minutes.

All that matters is that you keep writing, no matter what.

A Little Tiny Writing Exercise

A few years ago, I came across this website called One Word. It’s one of those sites you save and then forget about but rediscover every few months when you’re cleaning out your bookmarks. Every time I visit, I use it (because it’s interactive), and by the time I leave, which is maybe a minute and a half later, I feel strangely refreshed and revitalized.

One Word gives you just that — one word. Then it gives you something else. It gives you time. You get sixty seconds to write whatever you want, inspired by that single word, that gift.

It doesn’t sound like much, but every time I’ve visited that site and cranked out a minute’s worth of words, I’ve always felt good when I finished, like my right brain just got a little massage and the rest of my body is thanking me for it. And whether it’s been hours or days since I last took time to work on my own creative writing, One Word always reminds me that my passions need to have a priority in my life.

It’s a lot like the way I feel when I hear an inspiring, uplifting speech that motivates and moves me, except at this site, the words aren’t someone else’s; they’re mine. Well, except for that one.

Feed Your Soul

Here’s the thing about creativity: it is food for the soul. It’s the one thing that has a guaranteed return on investment. The more creativity you spend, the better you feel, the more creative you become, and more nourished is your spirit.

People like us need to feed the fire to keep the passion burning. Giving up on your creative writing isn’t an option because if we give up, we dry up. When you feed your right brain, your whole body benefits, and when you feed the fire that is your passion, your whole life and everyone in it reaps the rewards.

So make some time, take some time, to write. Go to OneWord.com and write for just a minute (surely you can spare sixty seconds — how about right now?) or close all those windows and open up your word processing software or turn off the computer and pick up your journal and just write.